I’ve been looking for a good recipe for chicken sausage and back in October, I made one that was devised by a friend and was flavoured with thyme, lemon and garlic having been inspired by Chef Thomas Keller’s famous recipe for chicken brine. I was so confident that it would be great that I even posted a ‘coming soon’ photo. After all, what’s not to like? They’re a classic combination. Well, somewhat embarrassingly, the family didn’t like it. I’m sure others will though and the recipe’s here for people who want to try it… …and I encourage you to do so.
I love a sausage roll but blimey, you kiss a few frogs before you find a prince! Too many are absolutely dire; the sausage meat is like meat paste and what is it with that pastry that’s neither short nor puff and is similar in texture to cardboard? I guess people tolerate it because they’re relatively cheap and they’re convenient.
As sausagemeat can be made without any fancy equipment they’re a great project for making at home. I would normally mince the pork myself to make these but to illustrate my point I’m using bought pork mince for these. You could get this from your butcher, or as in this case, the local supermarket. If it’s from your butcher ask for 80/20 visible lean. From the supermarket, buy the 20% fat pork mince, not the 5% fat one.
I assembled what I needed for the sausagemeat, most of the spices in the spice dabba won’t be used on this occasion but they do add a bit of colour to the photo!
The ingredients for each kilogram of pork mince are:
280gm Water 180gm Rusk 22gm Cornflour 18gm Salt 4gm Ground white pepper 2gm Ground black pepper 1.5gm Ground nutmeg 1.5gm Ground ginger 1.5gm Ground coriander 0.5gm Ground mace 3gm Rubbed sage
To make things easier, there is a calculator at the end of this post.
I don’t write much about fresh sausage, mainly because we generally stick to the two recipes I’ve already put online, my Thurlaston sausage and Lincolnshire sausage. However, I thought I’d do something different for a change and chose to make Pork and Apple sausages. Now I’ve tried these before and wasn’t happy with the results so I trawled the web to see what I could plagiarise from other people! The results received rave reviews from the family, so here’s my recipe with thanks to Welsh Wizard and Parson Snows from the sausagemaking.org forum on whose recipes’ it’s loosely based:
Sausage Seasoning Mix
16g Salt 3g White Pepper 1g Fresh Rosemary 0.5g Dried Sage
Chop Rosemary then mix together well. I mixed them in a coffee grinder.
For 1kg of meat
1kg Locally Produced Pork Shoulder (about 20% visible fat) 85g Rusk 40g Dried Apple 110g Apple juice plus extra (see below) 20.5g Seasoning mix (above)
Start with about 400ml of good-quality apple juice. Boil it in a pan until it is reduced by half and leave it to cool. Then soak the dried apples in it for about 1 hour before chopping them.
Having kept the pork in a very cold fridge, mince it. I minced it through a plate with 6mm holes and then through one with 4.5mm holes. Add the rusk, seasoning, and chopped apple and then pour 110gm (110ml roughly) of the remaining apple juice over. Either mix by hand until you think you’re going to get frostbite or use a Kenwood-type food mixer (not a food processor) to mix it for 3 or 4 minutes until the mixture is sticky sausage meat. That is, it changes from just a burger-type mix into a sticky mass; the smell seems to change too. It’s hard to describe but you need to do this to develop the myosin in the meat that will stop the sausage from becoming dry and crumbly when you cook it. You may need to add a little more apple juice to get a good mix. Don’t add more than an extra 20ml – 25ml though, otherwise, the sausage will spit like a camel when you fry it!
Stuff the sausage into pre-soaked casings (follow the supplier’s advice for soaking the casings), then hang them to ‘bloom’ (develop flavour) in the fridge for 6 – 8 hours. Some fridges are very dry so check the sausages regularly and if they appear to be drying out too quickly put them on a tray and cover them for the rest of the ‘blooming’ period.
You could use cider instead of apple juice in this recipe. Preferably a local one.
The only disappointing thing about these sausages is that I had to buy imported dried apples; it looks like I’m going to have to dry some myself when they’re next in season
When I came across a sausage called the “Far-Famed Cambridge Sausage” in a 1938 ‘Handy Guide for Pork Butchers’, I couldn’t resist making it? But what type of sausage was it?
I’m guessing that it was far better known in those days: I’d only ever heard of it in passing. A quick online search told me that the best know brand was Palethorpe’s ‘Royal Cambridge sausages’, though they were made in Shropshire, and that there were 2,500lbs of them were aboard the Titanic when she sailed on her maiden voyage!
This sausage formulation was posted on the sausagemaking.org forum. It has had a slight alteration by me. It was developed from a recipe that was originally supplied by the butcher Phil Groth to forum member Parson Snows with some adaption by another forum member, Oddley.
I have since been informed that the only herbs and spices in a ‘true’ Lincolnshire sausage are sage, salt, and pepper. This was supported by The Lincolnshire Sausage Association’s application for EU PGI status. So, this recipe is ‘technically’ not a true Lincolnshire; it is, however, a great recipe and a Lincolnshire sausage in spirit.
This is the everyday Pork Sausage that I make for Pauline. She prefers thin sausage in sheep’s casings. Sheep’s casings are harder to use than hogs as they split more easily but the extra care needed is worth it as the delicate casings make for great eating.
This sausage is an amended version of the Every Day Pork Sausage that I posted a while ago. The first version is a nice peppery sausage that we all like a lot. The family, however, thinks this one is even better. Less peppery and with a more rounded flavour.
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